Bridgeport Raid

The Bridgeport Raid (1 January 1778) was a raid carried out by the loyalist Queen's Rangers of Captain John Graves Simcoe during the American Revolutionary War. The rangers stormed a rebel encampment in Connecticut, across the shore from their winter base at Setauket, Long Island, freeing Major Edmund Hewlett and slaughtering the Continentals stationed at the camp before proceeding to be deployed in Oyster Bay.

Background
In December of 1777, Captain John Graves Simcoe and the Queen's Rangers arrived at a Continental Army encampment across the bay from Setauket, Long Island, where the rangers were stationed for the winter. Simcoe intended to frame Major Edmund Hewlett for the murder of Captain McCarrey, the commander of the 10th Connecticut Regiment at the camp, and Simcoe stabbed McCarrey through the throat with a bayonet. He proceeded to write down a statement signed by Hewlett saying that death would come to all of the rebels, using McCarrey's blood as ink before cutting out his tongue and impaling it on the letter with a knife. Simcoe's plot succeeded, as Hewlett was kidnapped from his headquarters at Whitehall in Setauket at gunpoint by Continentals while Judge Richard Woodhull and his guests were forced into the dining room. Hewlett suffered brutality at the hands of his captors, who tortured him and stripped him naked before throwing him into a stockade in the freezing snow. Soon after, Setauket woman Anna Strong - whom Simcoe was enamred with - asked Simcoe to rescue Hewlett as a favor for her, and she would grant him a favor in return. Simcoe eventually decided to agree with her, and he asked for a kiss before he left with his men. However, he had no intention of rescuing Hewlett; he would kill Hewlett and all of the Continentals, and he would claim that the rebels had killed Hewlett.

Battle
On New Year's Day of 1778, Captain Simcoe led his unit of rangers into the Continental camp, and Simcoe started the raid by impaling Lieutenant John Chaffee through the chest with a bayonet as he read a letter from George Washington ordering him to stay the planned execution of Hewlett. Simcoe told his men to take care of the other Continentals while he headed to kill Hewlett himself; the British ambushed the Americans, killing many of them as they hurried for their weapons in their night clothes. The ambush was perfect, with all of the Americans being killed. However, Hewlett stabbed Simcoe in the chest and fled from the outpost by himself, and Simcoe and his men decided to carry on to Oyster Bay, believing that Hewlett would die in the wilderness.